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Chris Haueter Talks Leandro Lo’s Tragic Death: “(BJJ Practitioners) Have A False Sense Of Security”

Chris Haueter Talks Leandro Lo’s Tragic Death: “(BJJ Practitioners) Have A False Sense Of Security”

Veteran black belt Chris Haueter recently reflected on how the evolution of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu training has shaped both its effectiveness – and practitioners’ perceptions of real-world confrontations.

Haueter revisited the early days of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, when challenge matches were a proving ground for the art’s effectiveness:

If you have a martial arts school, you’re claiming you teach martial arts, and you turn down a challenge, that’s kind of cowardice.

At a time when martial arts were viewed through the lens of stylized movie techniques, these matches provided concrete validation of Jiu-Jitsu’s superiority:

If you’re a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt and Jiu-Jitsu has not yet been exposed to the whole world, and everybody you met thought that Chuck Norris’s back spin kick was the ultimate technique…

You would know beyond a shadow of a doubt that if you could close that gap, once the clinch is on, you would win.

However, Haueter expressed concern about how modern training practices might create unrealistic expectations for practitioners in real-world scenarios.
His wife, also a BJJ black belt, shared similar reservations:

I think people have a false sense of security with their laying on their back, pulling guard, or using spider guard, or whatever it is.

Haueter acknowledged the divergence between sport Jiu-Jitsu and its martial roots:

And I would even say that current MMA, in some ways – at least in terms of mind and spirit – is closer to what Jiu-Jitsu was back then than what a sport Jiu-Jitsu school is today, in mind and spirit.

Drawing from personal experiences, Haueter also touched on the dangers of letting ego drive confrontations outside the mats…
Also touching upon the tragic death of Leandro Lo:

And I would highly advise everyone out there to not follow my path and be one of those guys that kind of has a chip.

For whatever happened, that guy was utterly humiliated to a point where he came back and killed (Leandro Lo), right?

Sloth Jiu-Jitsu: you can be slow and unathletic and still kick butt in Jiu-Jitsu.

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